STATEMENT FROM AASCU PRESIDENT MURIEL HOWARD ON THE TERMINATION OF THE DACA PROGRAM

We are profoundly disappointed with, and strongly oppose, the
administration’s decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood
Arrivals (DACA) program, under which individuals brought to the United
States as children have been provided temporary reprieve from
deportation from the only country many of them have ever known.

Today’s announcement is all the more unfortunate in light of the
administration’s failure to articulate a solution to the plight of the
more than 800,000 young people whose lives are turned upside down by
this action. On multiple occasions, the president himself has expressed
personal sympathy for young Dreamers, giving them hope that his
administration will lead the effort to devise a legal solution to
address their undocumented status. In terminating the program without
proposing policy alternatives, the White House is abandoning these young
and talented individuals to a fate that is as unnecessary as it is
cruel.

We call on Congress to act immediately by passing legislation to resolve this human tragedy.